IT WAS the evolutionary find of the century&colon; a diminutive human-like fossil that called into question basic assumptions about the origin of our species. No, not Homo floresiensis, aka the hobbit, discovered in Indonesia a decade ago this September. This troublemaker, an equally tiny member of the human lineage – the hominins – was unearthed some 80 years earlier. The discovery in 1924 of the Taung child astonished and unsettled researchers because it didn’t fit their picture of human evolution. It came from a continent few thought was key for human evolution&colon; Africa.

No one now doubts that Africa was the cradle of humanity – the idea goes back to Darwin after all – but early in the 20th century most researchers believed we evolved in Eurasia. The Taung child was the first fossil to challenge that orthodoxy. And Raymond Dart, an anthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, earned himself an academic mauling for placing his discovery in a brand new hominin category he named Australopithecus (“southern ape”). It would take his critics several decades to admit they were wrong.

But could they have been right about Eurasia after all? Recently, some prominent researchers have come round to the idea that hominins may have left their African cradle much earlier than we thought and undergone critical evolutionary transitions further north. There are even whispers that one of the most important evolutionary events of all – the appearance of our genus, Homo – may have occurred under Eurasian rather than African skies. And the catalyst behind this radical rethink? That pesky little hobbit.